SEO Tops Recession Internet Marketing Tactics

Let’s face it, we’re experiencing more than “interesting” economic times, especially those with a marketing responsibility in-house and at agencies.

To tap in to the stream of marketing-savvy collective wisdom online, we reached out to our network with a top internet marketing tactics poll for the next 6 months. Over 400 business marketers responded, making this the most popular poll Online Marketing Blog has run to-date. Readers were asked: What 3 internet marketing tactics will you emphasize most in the next 6 months?

Here are the results of the poll:

Search engine optimization (36%, 149 Votes)

Blogging (33%, 134 Votes)

Pay per click (26%, 107 Votes)

Email marketing (22%, 89 Votes)

Social networking (Facebook, LinkedIn) (21%, 86 Votes)

Blogger relations/blog PR (14%, 56 Votes)

Microblogging (Twitter, Plurk, Jaiku) (11%, 47 Votes)

Affiliate marketing (11%, 47 Votes)

Advertorial (NewsForce, AdFusion) (10%, 40 Votes)

Video marketing (7%, 29 Votes)

Search engine optimization, blogging and PPC taking the top 3 spots shouldn’t be too much of a surprise, although I wouldn’t have called them in that order.

One surprise is that “Corporate Web Site” received only 7% of the votes. An even more interesting result was that Advertorial was in the top ten. While AdFusion certainly falls in the advertorial category, NewsForce doesn’t consider itself advertorial, but rather “paid PR”. I personally don’t see the difference at the category level.

I suspect if “social media” had been presented as a single category, it would have garnered the top spot since social media tactics involve 5 of the top ten.

What do these poll results mean for internet marketers? First, SEO has achieved a comfort level for most marketers. Contrary to some mainstream media characterizations, search engine optimization is a high impact, high value tactic for reaching customers online. Actually, search is about customers reaching/seeking companies, not the other way around. With SEO, it isn’t a matter of “Should we?” it’s a matter of, “What’s stopping you?”.

Personally, I think those that incorporate long term engagement strategies via social media rather than short online campaigns with definitive start/end dates will realize continued growth in their marketing programs regardless of the economic situation. Social media tactics occupy 5 of the top ten spots. Social media is an ongoing relationship of listening, engaging and “giving to get”.

Search engine optimization factors into many aspects of social media (think keywords and tags!) along with being a highly effective tactic on it’s own. Many of the marketers taking this poll realize that and have responded accordingly.

Do you agree that SEO should be online marketers’ top internet marketing tactic over the next 6 months?

Thank you to all the readers of Online Marketing Blog, our Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn networks for taking the poll!

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@LeeOdden is the CEO of TopRank Marketing and editor of Online Marketing Blog. Cited for his expertise by The Economist, Forbes and the Wall Street Journal, he's the author of the book Optimize and presents internationally on B2B marketing topics including content, search, social media and influencer marketing. When not at conferences, consulting, or working with his talented team, he's likely running, traveling or cooking up something new.

It looks like marketers are doing the same thing that consumers are – looking at less expensive methods for exposure. From my day-to-day analyses of SEO vs. PPC, SEO has improved for the past several weeks, while PPC has become more of a challenge. Don’t know if that is unique to our company / market, but wouldn’t be surprised.

Search Engine Optimization should be the number one on the list. Most website visitors go through the search engines than any other method of finding content. Better website ROI is what is most important, even in slow times. Nothing beats SEO work on a website. I think video (VSEO) will be the big thing since Google is featuring media content more.

I agree SEO should be top of the list, but I am absolutely biased so… I think a great drill down would be BtoB and BtoC as well as industry vertical. These polls are really a warm up for what we’ll start doing with “real” surveys at marketingblog.com.

REALLY appreciating all the participation so far and hope it’s useful to other readers.

Given the fact that this was a poll given to bloggers, I totally understand why SEO is #1. With all the ‘seo’ plugins and all the quality traffic blogs get from Google, it’s obvious that bloggers will even know what SEO is, let alone say it’s the desired internet marketing tactic.

Most people don’t even know what ‘SEO’ is. How do they vote for something they don’t know about?

I think if this were an actual study, I think PPC would be #1 followed by email marketing. Since most businesses aren’t completely internet savvy as us, they will choose more traditional Internet Marketing tactics. 🙂

Maybe even Email would be #1, who knows?

But, aside from this sobering truth (unscientific-ness of the study. :P) I think it’s great that bloggers/some marketers are embracing SEO. Since there are hundreds of ‘snail oil’ sellers out there, it’s good to hear, not all is bad with SEO. The comfort level is growing and that’s the point of this post (I hope). Who knows, maybe 5-10 years from now it would be a solid #1 or something else could evolve from the amazing creativity the internet creates.

Lee- 400 responsed is very impressive. I think video marketing is low based on most people feeling it is complicated and expensive. That’s the feedback we get. We try to explain how expensive PPC and other tactics (including SEO) are, but limited success with that argument so far.

Another great poll, Lee. Frankly, I am surprised that SEO led the list. As a 12 yr SEO vet, I am still getting push-back from clients on SEO. We are trying to build SEO into all new Web development, instead of after the fact. We see more upside in SEO for PR communications (ie. Social Media News Release). Finally, SEO now is mostly about link relevancy, so are there specific programs around link development instead of the tired Meta tag/Web copy optimization?

I agree with the first two = SEO and blogging – both of which I have ramped up in the last 3-4 months. As for PPC I have backed off as conversions were tanking because of the doubt and fear in the marketplace seemed to be freezing buyers from making a move. I like the idea of paid press releases and I have implemented an affiliate program in the last 3 months. keeping the business lean and getting more exposure are both priorities for me now.
David Fairley
President, websiteproperties.com

Great stuff, Lee! I’m hoping that those who responded understand that SEO is more than just the technical aspects of it. To me, effective SEO is really a content strategy that would envelop blogging, microblogging, and other social media. More often than not those activities create the desired SEO/traffic results.

I would have thought that PPC will be the #1 not necessairly because it is the best option but rather because in times of recession bringing some immediate results would be key. But certainly SEO is the wisest choice for a financially stable company

A combination of both PPC and ethical search engine optimisation is in my opinion cost effective and efficient, depending on the compenies budget of course. If it is a newly formed business then PPC would be a better option due to the time it take to conduct ethical optimisation i.e. dont gain too many links too quickly or you may end up in the google sandbox.

I didnt see fax marketing mentioned in the poll, which is a good marketing strategy to niche markets.

I do indeed agree that SEO should be the in the top 6 tactics. The exception being, in my opinion, that the integral use of social media as a synergistic element to the SEO strategy could spell big trouble. As noted by Charles Heflin in his article entitled “I spotted Bigfoot on your website doing social marketing,”

Its quite true that (SEO)Search Engine Optimization is #1 as it saves cost and is used for long term basis. Social networking is good but i think that most of the traffic that comes from Social is bulk traffic – still we can’t avoid it. But in terms of quality wise we can go for SEO, Blogging which is true and can be seen in voting.

# Email marketing is an old concept so it would stay long forever.

# PPC is great to experiment and analysis so it would stay long.

# Video marketing would take much time though it can have an impact on brand marketing but will soon evolve in the coming times.

Last but not the least i find SEO is the best way to leverage costs and gain exposure from Search Engines which can be converted to sales.

Thanks for your article. As someone who is fairly new at internet marketing I’m encouraged to know I’m focused on the right areas. There is so much to learn and it is comforting to see evidence from a good size group of people answering a survey.

Yes you are correct! Organic results it a small fee compared to monthly 2,500 – 10,000.00 pay per clicks. SEO Companies should be able to capitalize on the bad economy. – http://www.SeoTopConsultant.comn

[…] SEO Tops Recession Internet Marketing Tactics – Over 400 internet marketing professionals took this survey to identify the top Internet marketing tactics to focus on over the next 6 months and SEO came out on top. […]

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